


Subjecting a God

by tptplayer5701



Series: "Mind Games"-verse [25]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Family, Friendship, Horror, Identity Reveal, Kwami & Miraculous Lore, Magic, New Miraculous, New Miraculous Holders, Post-Hawk Moth Defeat, Protective Siblings, Psychological Horror, Service Dogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25903252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tptplayer5701/pseuds/tptplayer5701
Summary: A "Mind Games"-verse story:Alix turned to see where Chloe was looking. “Oh, no,” she muttered, staring in shock.“No, I need to find him! Do you know where Alim Kubdel is? I–this is seriously important! Proof!” Jalil was standing in front of a museum guard, shouting and gesticulating wildly, his hair in disarray with sawdust puffing out of it every time he moved. He was pointing at something on his phone. “This really can’t wait! It’s… life-changing!” At that moment he looked into the dining area and met Alix’s eyes.Alix paled and her eyes went wide.Please don’t embarrass me…
Relationships: Alix Kubdel & Jalil Kubdel, Alix Kubdel & Sabrina Raincomprix, Chloé Bourgeois & Alix Kubdel, Chloé Bourgeois & Sabrina Raincomprix, Max Kanté & Alix Kubdel, Max Kanté & Chloé Bourgeois, Max Kanté/Sabrina Raincomprix
Series: "Mind Games"-verse [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666807
Comments: 34
Kudos: 44





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jalil and Alix don’t really interact in the show, so I’m pretty much inventing their relationship from whole cloth. If it seems a little out of character in this chapter for what little we _do_ see, wait for chapter 2 when everything should make more sense.

Jalil Kubdel rubbed his eyes and replaced his wire-rimmed glasses before squinting back down at the picture on his laptop. He would much rather have studied the tablet itself, but that was safely locked up in its display case at the Louvre. _Maybe if I’m able to decipher these last few glyphs, Dad will let me take it out to confirm._ He flipped a few pages in his ancient Egyptian dictionary and found the hieroglyphic in question. “‘Tunnel,’” he murmured, comparing it to the Egyptology book open on his desk. “But that doesn’t make sense… And what is this? ‘Wonderment.’” He sat back and folded his hands. “But that’s not the normal term for ‘Wonderment’… in fact I don’t think I’ve _ever_ seen that glyph used, not in first millennium B.C. writings…” He furrowed his brow and resumed his translation.

The door slammed open, and he tumbled backward off his chair in shock. In a desperate attempt to save himself he threw his legs out, kicking the bottom of his desk and knocking his books over, scattering papers in all directions. He looked up from the floor to see Alix standing in the doorway, already dressed for the museum and wearing her roller skates, with her regular shoes hanging over one shoulder. She stared down at him, an amused look on her face.

“Hey, loser,” she called, folding her arms and arching an eyebrow at him. “Is this a new trend in sleeping arrangements? I’ve heard of sleeping in a chair and sleeping on the floor, but you’re the first to combine the two!”

“Brat,” he retorted, glaring up at her. “Haven’t you heard of knocking?”

“What, and miss out on this?” She grinned. “Are you ready yet? We’ll be late if we don’t leave soon.”

“I’ll be ready once I get up off the floor,” he grumbled, pushing himself up. “But could you take a look at this? I was working on translating that tablet this morning.”

“Again?” she rolled her eyes and shook her head affectionately. “Didn’t Dad say he already figured it out with his experts?”

He scoffed. “Yeah, they _translated_ it, but I don’t think they really _understood_ it,” he replied. He held the laptop computer out to her and pointed to a couple of the hieroglyphics. “Look at these symbols,” he told her. “Dad’s ‘experts’ translated them as ‘a unique passage.’ They assumed that it meant a _written_ passage because of the context and where the tablet was found. But the thing is, these glyphs are much older than the dating of the tablet they are written on. And look here.” He pointed to a line of hieroglyphics in the middle of the tablet that appeared to have been bisected in a straight line. “Some of these symbols are _never_ used in ancient Egyptian writings! But if you switch the bottoms around like this–” he switched the picture to a Photoshopped version with the bottom halves of the hieroglyphics reversed “–suddenly it all makes sense! There’s a secret passage hidden inside the Sphinx!”

Alix gave him a look of amusement. “You realize that theory was disproved before I was born, right?”

“Was Cayce _disproved_ , or was the proof just not discovered when and where he predicted?” he retorted, raising an eyebrow at her.

“No, I’m pretty sure he was disproved.”

“Or else the proof is still there, just waiting to be discovered!”

“Why would you hide a secret passage under the _Sphinx_ of all places?” Alix demanded in disbelief.

“So what’s _your_ explanation for these hieroglyphics?”

She shrugged. “Maybe they got smudged.”

He stared at her dumbfounded. “That… that makes _less_ sense than my theory,” he told her, jaw open in bewilderment. “How do you smudge a clay tablet!?!”

“The same way millions of visitors, historians, and archaeologists miss a ton of secret passages under one of the most recognizable structures on the planet for five millennia,” she replied, arching an eyebrow. “At least my theory means _one_ person messed up instead of thousands of generations!” She checked her watch. “But we’re wasting time. Dad’s expecting us in five.”

Jalil nodded, packed his computer and books in his messenger bag, and followed Alix out the apartment door. He was just locking up when he realized that he had forgotten about breakfast entirely. He looked over at Alix, who was already holding out a muffin to him and failing to suppress a grin. “Thanks,” he said, taking a bite of the muffin.

“I swear,” she replied, shaking her head and keeping pace with him easily on the sidewalk, “you would forget your head if you didn’t need it to hold onto all your useless knowledge!”

He glared at her, but felt his face crack at the impish look she gave him. “You’re a brat,” he muttered. “My knowledge isn’t useless!”

“Then tell me,” she asked, spinning around to skate backwards in front of him, “who won the last World Cup?”

He furrowed his brow.

“We watched it together?” she prompted, arching an eyebrow at him. “You were reading about the Pyramids?”

“Was it… Egypt?”

Alix’s jaw dropped open and she nearly fell backwards, staring at him in shock. “Tell me you’re not serious!” she asked weakly. “They… they scored two goals in the entire _tournament_! Egypt didn’t win a _game_ , let alone make it out of Group!”

“Well _sorry_ I don’t pay attention to sports!” he retorted dismissively. “So who–?”

“ _France_ you idiot!” she laughed.

“Wait… _really_?” he asked in surprise.

“Please tell me you remember the victory parade? The day off from school? Any of this sounding familiar?”

“ _That_ ’s what that was for?”

“You’re hopeless.” Alix shook her head and drifted to one side to avoid a garbage can. “If it happened in the last three millennia, it’s like it doesn’t matter to you…” she muttered.

“I don’t need to know about things like that,” he replied, smirking. “That’s what I’ve got _you_ for!”

Alix rolled her eyes and blew a bubble in his face.

When they stopped outside the Louvre for her to switch to her regular shoes, he smiled at her. “I’m glad you decided to take a job here with me and Dad for the summer,” he told her. “We don’t see each other nearly enough.”

“And whose fault is that, M. ‘Triple-Major-at-University’?” she asked, grinning. She tied the laces of her skates together and threw one over her shoulder.

“If you put in the effort, _you_ could do it in a couple years, too,” he replied, quirking an eyebrow at her. “Life doesn’t have to revolve around sports, you know.”

She nodded and pushed the front door open. “You’re just jealous because I’ve got friends younger than the Pyramids!”

“I have friends younger than the Pyramids!”

“The Ptolemys don’t count!”

“Well, speaking of friends, it looks like a few of yours are going to be in your tour group this morning,” he commented, pointing at the crowd waiting by the art gallery entrance. “You have fun there.”

“And I suppose a few of _your_ friends are waiting for you downstairs,” she replied, spitting her gum in the trashcan. “See you at lunch, then – assuming you remember to eat!”

Jalil stuck up a finger at her in mock anger before pushing open the stairwell door and going down to the Acquisitions room. He had worked directly for his dad in the curator’s office for his first couple years after university, but then his dad had decided he needed to branch out and learn about more of the museum’s workings. Jalil didn’t mind Acquisitions. He got to see all the new exhibits before anyone else; that was how he had found the tablet he was still trying to decipher. Of course, Acquisitions included almost everything – occasionally he helped unpack the new art exhibits, though ordinarily the Art Department’s people handled those by themselves. Normally, he just focused on the new Egyptology artifacts, of which they had just received several crates from a dig south of Giza.

Today he was scheduled to work alone, which suited him just fine – he preferred working by himself to having someone constantly looking over his shoulders, and his supervisor rarely allowed him to spend enough time on cataloging the more interesting of the new exhibits. The light flickered on automatically when he pushed the door open, and he immediately went to check the schedule for which crate he was to check that day: Box 13. He walked down the aisles between the crates, checking the stenciled labels until he found the correct box. He frowned. This box was a half-meter taller than he was, rectangular and large enough to fit three of him inside comfortably. The manifest showing the contents was stapled to the front of the crate, and he pulled it off to check.

“This one’s an obelisk of some sort,” he observed to himself. They hadn’t received a new obelisk in several years – a new one hadn’t been discovered in an even longer time than that. He took a closer look. “But why was it _there_? There isn’t anything in this particular region to warrant an obelisk, certainly not as ornate as the picture suggests. And how could that dating possibly be correct? If it’s really that old, that would make it the oldest obelisk known! And it doesn’t even list the type of rock used to _make_ it! Come to think of it, I don’t know of any rocks that specific color that would be found in the area and usable for an obelisk…”

Jalil found a stepladder and crowbar to pry the top off the crate. Considering the value of this particular find, it would be terrible to discover that it had been damaged in transit. He carefully removed the top of the crate and pulled away some of the material filler until the tip of the blood-red obelisk was visible. He could see a small chip in the stone, revealing the brighter red stone underneath, but according to the manifest that imperfection had already been there – based on the patina it had probably happened within the last two centuries. Slowly, carefully, he removed the rest of the filler and pulled the crate apart to reveal the full obelisk. It was constructed of a single piece of stone, without any seams or holes, carved on all four sides with hieroglyphics that looked to have been filled in with black pigment, and to his eye looked centuries beyond the technological abilities of the people who would have created such an old artifact. A few hieroglyphics were obscured and faded, but he could understand many of them.

Jalil pulled out his camera and started taking pictures of the obelisk from all sides. A couple of glyphs jumped out. “‘Gods,’” he translated. “But that’s an older form of the word. ‘Wonderment’… That word again? There can’t be a connection there… can there?”


	2. Chapter 2

“… and then Kim asked, ‘Wait, why am I seeing _four_ of you?’”

Alix laughed along with the rest of the group. Her tour had ended about thirty minutes earlier, and her next one wasn’t scheduled for another hour, so she had decided to have lunch with her friends at the Comptoir du Louvre in the meantime. Nathaniel and Marc were deep in conversation on the other side of the table about their newest comic book – Nathaniel wanted to develop a _Ladybug_ spinoff focusing on Geber for some reason. Max was regaling the rest of the table with stories about Kim’s dares gone wrong while Markov searched his database for clips of the more recent ones. Alix snorted; she already knew most of those stories – hell, _she_ ’s the one who dared him to go base-jumping off the collège on their first day!

“Base-jumping is so dangerous,” Lila commented, sipping her shake. “When I did it at the Grand Canyon one of the other people in the group broke his leg at the bottom and I needed to carry him all the way back!”

Alix furrowed her brow. She’d never been to America, but the idea of base-jumping off the Grand Canyon raised a few red flags. Of course, she’d stopped paying much attention to Lila’s stories in the last couple months. Considering how many of Lila’s stories had revolved around her being best friends with Ladybug… Alix knew who Ladybug’s best friend was now, and it _definitely_ was not Lila!

Max started telling another story, but Alix tuned it out; she’d been there for that one, too. Unfortunately, her best Kim story was one she couldn’t actually tell in this crowd – he’d been wearing a mask at the time. She glanced down at her watch. Lunchtime had come and gone, and Jalil was nowhere to be seen. She frowned. She would get to see him at lunchtime all summer, of course. And him not being here meant that she could hang out with her friends a little longer – which was just fine with her. Since school had ended over a month ago and she had been working at the Louvre almost every day, Alix had hardly seen any of them. She honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Nathaniel or Marc. Lila was always so busy. Max and Sabrina never seemed to have time for anyone else. Actually, as strange as it sounded, she had probably seen _Chloe_ more recently than any of the others, since they had gone on patrol together once last week!

All the same… she checked her watch again. Thirty minutes before the next tour. She had more than enough time to bring him a sandwich from the café before it started. This was probably for the best: he would still get to eat, and she could just hang out with her friends without them having to sit through a reprise of Jalil’s crazy theory about the Sphinx.

Chloe scoffed. “He is so ridiculous! I–” She cut off abruptly and turned to stare at the far end of the dining area.

Confused, Alix turned to see where she was looking. “Oh, no,” she muttered, staring in shock.

“No, I need to find him! Do you know where Alim Kubdel is? I–this is seriously important! Proof!” Jalil was standing in front of a museum guard, shouting and gesticulating wildly, his hair in disarray with sawdust puffing out of it every time he moved. He was pointing at something on his phone. “This really can’t wait! It’s… life-changing!” At that moment he looked into the dining area and met Alix’s eyes.

Alix paled and her eyes went wide. _Please don’t embarrass me…_

“Alix!” he shouted, waving and running over to her table, almost bowling over a man who had been part of Alix’s tour group. “Have you seen Dad today?” he asked, breathless with excitement. His eyes were bugging out, an all-too-familiar manic glint in them. “It’s this obelisk: it’s all wrong!” He shoved his phone in her face with shaking hands, and she could see a close-up of several hieroglyphics carved into a blood-red stone. “The writing is absolutely ancient – from centuries before any other existing obelisk. Do you see? This word here… it’s never used on the later obelisks. So it _must_ be millennia old!” He shifted to a different picture showing the entire obelisk. “But look here: the stone shows no evidence of tool marks! No seams, no masonry, not even a chip from a poorly-carved glyph… it’s a single piece, and it somehow was not carved! Do you have any idea what this means?”

Alix gulped, afraid what his answer would be.

“Aliens!”

Alix tore her eyes away from the phone screen to see the looks on her friends’ faces. Nathaniel was looking at her in open shock. Marc appeared to be confused. Lila wore an unreadable expression on her face. Sabrina and Chloe were staring at her wide-eyed. Max was examining Jalil closely, brows furrowed. Alix buried her head in her hands on the table. _This can’t be happening to me, not in front of my friends._

“Aliens!” Jalil repeated, pushing his phone under her nose. “This glyph here is an older glyph for ‘god’ or ‘gods.’ And this one here means ‘monsters.’ I think this is something like ‘great power.’ So do you see? An ancient obelisk cut and shaped in a manner impossible even with modern technology and talking about ‘gods’? What else can it be _except_ ancient aliens!?! To an ancient people, beings from outer space would appear as gods. I’ve finally found the proof!” he shouted, hugging his phone to his chest. “So what do you think?”

“What do I think?” Alix repeated, picking her head up off the table glaring up at him. “I think you’re talking like an absolute lunatic! Aliens and gods and monsters? It’s absolutely insane! This rock doesn’t prove anything! It’s a stupid rock!!! There’s got to be a simpler explanation – one that _doesn’t_ involve ancient aliens coming to earth to teach the ancient people to ‘walk like an Egyptian’! Have you considered that _maybe_ you don’t understand hieroglyphics as well as you think? That _maybe_ not everything has to be about aliens? You’re more _cracked_ than any of the stupid ancient relics you love so much!” By the end of her speech, Alix realized that she was standing up, nose-to-nose with her brother and shouting in his face. She couldn’t remember when she had stood up. She blinked and leaned back slightly.

Jalil gave her a look of surprise and confusion. “But–” he started, only to stop. His gaze turned hard and he wheeled around and stalked off the way he had come. She barely heard him mutter, “I’ll _show_ you proof…” as he stormed out of the dining area

Alix gasped and sank back into her chair. The rest of the dining area was utterly silent. What had she just done? Sure, Jalil came up with some crazy theories – his idea about resurrecting the dead had gotten him Akumatized and he’d nearly sacrificed _Alya_! And yet she always _tried_ to humor him as much as she could… at least when they were alone. But here, in front of her friends, he had started spouting off yet _another_ of his crackpot theories and embarrassed her in front of everyone. As the noise level in the dining area slowly returned to normal, she looked up to find her friends all still staring at her in shock.

“Sorry about that,” she finally managed to say, forcing herself to smile, though she was sure it came out as more of a pained grimace. “My brother… can get a little carried away sometimes…”

“It certainly sounds like it,” Lila observed. “It’s so horrible that you have to live with that. You’re so brave to put up with it. Why, it’s just like my uncle in Italy.” She sniffed melodramatically. “I’m so sorry. I–I think I need to give him a call, actually.” And she left.

“That was really intense,” Marc said, still staring at her in shock, a look of concern in his eyes. He shook his head. “But it sounds like a hell of a twist for our comic book!” With that he grabbed Nathaniel’s hand and pulled him away. Nathaniel gave her a sympathetic look as they left.

Alix looked at the three left at the table and put her head in her hands. _This is so humiliating…_ She wasn’t sure if she meant Jalil’s outburst or her own. Or the fact that _her_ outburst seemed to have hurt him so badly. She hadn’t _meant_ to say such mean things. Really.

Sabrina put a hand on Alix’s arm and quietly said, “That was really embarrassing. But maybe it was a little mean.”

Alix looked up at her suspiciously. This wasn’t the first time in the last year that she had suspected Sabrina of being able to read her mind… or at least her emotions. “Please,” she replied, waving her hand dismissively and trying to ignore her embarrassment. “Jalil’s always spouting off his crackpot theories, and each one is more ridiculous than the last. I mean, two months ago he was convinced that the pyramids were actually alien spaceships that got caught in earth’s gravity and couldn’t escape! And this one! I mean, a hieroglyphic-covered rock from space!?!”

Chloe scoffed. “Girl, I watched you crawling all over the alien spaceship at the potluck!”

“Chloe…” warned Sabrina, giving her a look of annoyance.

Alix let out a strangled noise of shock. Her eyes shot wide open and she paled. They weren’t supposed to discuss Heroes of Paris business in front of outsiders! Her eyes darted to Max and Sabrina, who were both watching her intently. Something felt off…

Chloe smirked and held up three fingers. “And three… two… one…”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Alix muttered, looking more closely at Max and Sabrina and finally catching on to Sabrina’s amused smirk. She slammed her head into the table on her arms and groaned.

Max smiled and checked to make sure no one was close enough to overhear them. “Your brother’s premise _could_ actually have some merit,” he told her quietly. “I have been studying extraterrestrial technology and artifacts for months now. I have visited space and seen the effects on a human spacecraft of impact with debris from an extraterrestrial vessel. I have even autopsied a pair of extraterrestrial bodies. Extraterrestrial visitors could certainly be taken for gods… and so for that matter could Kwamis or their holders. In fact, Alya has gathered compelling evidence on the Ladyblog that some of the demigods and heroes of ancient times may have been miraculous users who were misunderstood and taken for gods. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, after everything I have seen I am unwilling to call _anything_ truly impossible anymore. Implausible? Certainly. But not impossible.”

“So you think he might be right?” Alix asked, hardly believing her ears. Max was among the smartest people she knew – he invented artificial intelligence because he was _lonely_ – and if _he_ was curious about Jalil’s theory…

Max shrugged. “I would certainly like an opportunity to examine his evidence.”

Alix shook her head and gave Sabrina an annoyed look. “Of _course_ you can read my freaking mind,” she grumbled. “You think I was too harsh on him, don’t you?”

Sabrina gave her a sympathetic smile. “You didn’t want to be mean, but you did come across that way,” she replied. “And I can tell you that he was really upset and angry when he left.”

Alix groaned. All of that, and she had someone managed to look _worse_ in front of these three than she would have otherwise. She looked down at her watch: plenty of time to bring Jalil something to eat as a peace offering before the next tour. “I’ll go apologize, then,” she decided. Before she left the table, she gave them a funny look. “But should I _really_ tell him that we have proof that aliens exist?”

Max, Sabrina, and Chloe looked back and forth at one another before they all turned to Alix and Chloe said, “Definitely not.”


	3. Chapter 3

Jalil stormed away from the dining area without paying attention to where he was going. Ordinarily the Egyptology Department through which he was walking brought him a level of joy and excitement. Ordinarily, he would see some new feature of the various masks and tablets and papyri which would shed a different light on the reality in which the ancient Egyptians – some of his own ancestors – had lived. Ordinarily, he would at least stop to take a closer look at things like the tablet he had spent the last month trying to translate and decode. But ordinarily he didn’t feel this level of humiliation and embarrassment and anger. This was something he hadn’t felt in a couple of _years_.

He let out a low curse as he nearly stubbed his toe on a sarcophagus.

Jalil had practically grown up at the Louvre; under normal circumstances he could find his way around the museum with his eyes closed. The visitors and tourists gave him a wide berth as he stormed past; clearly word of his and Alix’s argument had spread like wildfire. A couple of the curators stared at him wide-eyed as he stalked past – perhaps they were remembering the _last_ time he felt this humiliated about the response to one of his theories. But he didn’t have time for their idle fears. He hardly noticed when the stairwell door flew open in front of him and he found himself on the stairs to the Acquisitions Department in the lower level.

How could Alix have said those things to him? Didn’t she have any idea how game-changing this obelisk could prove to be? All he needed was a little more evidence, and everyone would _have_ to take his theory seriously! Maybe he could have waited to announce his theory in the more traditional manner, but he had tried that a dozen times before over the last several years, and none of the academic journals had ever bothered to publish his papers. And besides, that could take too long. He was certain this theory was correct; all he needed was a second opinion on his translation for a couple of the more uncommon hieroglyphics. But he would show Alix, once he had completed his translation. Forget about that tablet or any of those scrolls cataloguing unexplained phenomena; this obelisk was his unassailable proof that aliens existed and had interacted with the ancient Egyptians!

He threw open the door to Acquisitions and stalked down the aisle to the workstation he had set up next to his obelisk. He withdrew his phone from his pocket, set it to record, and situated it on another crate where it had a clear view of the obelisk. Then he picked up his brush and climbed the stepladder.

“I have determined that this obelisk is a clear anomaly,” he announced for the recording, “but so far no one believes me. The obelisk itself is ‘carved’ – I use that term for lack of a more accurate descriptor; there is no evidence of _carving_ on any surface, it is as though the stone emerged fully-formed. But the obelisk is ‘carved’ from an unknown reddish stone. The hieroglyphics are of definite third millennium origin, bearing striking similarity to other carvings from that time period. They are not later additions, either, as you can tell from the patina within the lines. However, there is also evidence of later manipulation, based on the plaster which has seeped into these hieroglyphics. Based on the coloration and consistency of the plaster it was applied within the last two centuries.” He ran his brush over the plaster furiously, sending a small cloud of dust up. He coughed as it invaded his nostrils before pulling up the collar of his t-shirt to cover his nose. “As you can see, most of the plaster comes away easily with the application of friction, but this bit here may require something more.”

As he worked, he continued to refine his translation. “These glyphs here seem to indicate that there is something hidden within the obelisk which waits to be unleashed,” he explained for the recording. “‘Noble blood unlocks the power,’ but no indication of what the power is or what the ‘noble blood’ might refer to.” He rubbed a segment of plaster covering half of one hieroglyphic. “I can’t tell what this says without seeing the entire symbol, but the rest of the phrase translates as ‘Unlock the stone,’ with an intensifier on whatever this symbol is.” He frowned. “This is the key, I’m certain of it! But if I am going to _prove_ it, I need to remove this plaster so I can read the rest of the inscription.”

Jalil looked around and found his hammer and chisel sitting on the crate next to the obelisk. “I really can’t make any mistakes with this,” he muttered, setting the chisel at a sharp angle against the edge of the plaster. “Just a couple light taps and the biggest chunk should come right off.” He carefully lined up his hammer with the chisel and gave it a tiny tap to test. A small flake of plaster came off, leaving the obelisk surface beneath unaffected. Satisfied, he pulled the hammer back a little further and set the chisel to tap off a slightly larger section of the plaster.

The door on the far end of the Acquisitions room crashed open and slammed into the wall. Jalil’s hand slipped on the chisel, and unbidden an indigo _presence_ invaded his consciousness. “ _NO! DON’T TOUCH THAT!_ ” an unfamiliar male voice shouted in his mind. He couldn’t tell where the voice or the color came from, just that it was overwhelming him and flooding his mind with sensory overload. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t move. His hands stilled of their own accord for an instant as he stood, frozen in place as if held there by iron bands wrapped around his mind. Then his own consciousness reasserted itself against the force constraining it, pushed back against it, and impelled his hands to move to throw off the force restraining him. In his surprise, he slammed the hammer into the chisel so hard it dug into the obelisk itself and stuck there. Almost at once the overwhelming force that had been pressing down on his psyche disappeared, leaving him gasping for breath and feeling hollow inside, alone as he was with his own thoughts. In confusion he looked around the Acquisitions room to see what had happened. The door was swinging open on its hinges, but there was no sign of whomever or whatever had opened it. Then he looked back at the obelisk. “Oh, no.”

The plaster had all peeled away from the obelisk, but now the chisel was embedded in it, neatly bisecting a symbol which had previously been covered up: “Amun.” Jalil stared at the chisel in shock. This wasn’t supposed to happen! All of his proof! The oldest Egyptian obelisk in the world! He had somehow managed to mar its pristine surface! “No…” Without knowing what else to do, he grasped the chisel with a sweaty hand and started trying to wriggle it out of the obelisk. He pulled it down just the tiniest bit and felt the chisel ease a millimeter out. He let out a breath.

All at once a crack shot down the length of the obelisk from the spot where the chisel was stuck in it, and the obelisk itself shattered. Jalil dropped the chisel in shock, and it tinged off of something metallic in the space where the obelisk had stood moments before. The obelisk, which he now realized must have been hollow, released a cloud of grey dust that settled on everything. He covered his mouth and nose with the crook of his elbow to breathe, but even his sleeve was covered in the fine powder. A thin layer of dust had settled on the floor in all directions, as well as covering his phone screen and camera. Looking down at the partially-intact base of the obelisk, he could see that what remained of it, a single box-like shape a half-meter tall and hollowed-out, was filled to the brim with still more of the dust. His chisel had landed in the dust and disturbed it, revealing something made of gold buried within the dust. Jalil frowned. Was this the “power” that was supposed to be contained within the stone?

Jalil climbed down from the stepladder, picked up a fine paintbrush, and began carefully sweeping the dust away from the golden object. He could see a protrusion like a nose, set between two eyes – a face. It looked strangely human, similar to later Egyptian funerary masks. If this was indeed an alien artifact, it would suggest that the aliens were human – or at least resembled humans on a superficial level! Brushing away more of the dust, he uncovered a full mask of pure gold, complete with a rectangular, sharply-defined beard.

Jalil leaned over the mask, his face centimeters from it. He studied it closely: no jewels, no pigmentation, nothing except the gold which appeared to have been formed directly to a person’s head and showed no evidence of craftsmanship – it was as if it had appeared fully-formed. He furrowed his brows. Something about it…

“ _Pick up the mask._ ”

Where did that voice come from? Had he imagined it?

“ _Pick it up._ ”

Although the mask had not moved or changed, it was as though the mask itself were calling to him. The unearthly eyes stared deeply into his own.

“ _You desire recognition._ ”

He did want his theories to be heard and accepted.

“ _You desire a name. I will give you a strong name._ ”

What?

“ _You desire power. I can make you great._ ”

He did want that, didn’t he?

“ _Pick up the mask._ ”

When had his hand drifted so close to the mask? When had he touched it? He shook the dust out of the eye and nose depressions. Even seen from the back, he couldn’t find any evidence of metalwork, not even signs that it had been poured into a mold. How strange…

“ _Put it on. Accept Amun._ ”

“Amun”? Jalil hesitated. What would happen if he put on this mask? It looked too large for his face. There weren’t holes in the nose and mouth to breathe. There was nothing to hold it in place. He tried to put it down, but his hands would not obey. His body was hardly accepting his brain’s commands.

Jalil closed his eyes when his hands of their own accord brought the mask to his face and placed it on him. The mask seemed to melt onto him as it conformed to his face.

He opened his eyes, and all he could see was gold.


	4. Chapter 4

Alix held the café bag tightly in her hand. Pepperoni and cheddar was Jalil’s favorite sandwich; hopefully it would serve as a peace offering after her outburst before. He didn’t deserve to have her snap at him – especially not if _Max_ , basically the smartest person Alix knew, was willing to at least entertain his theory. At the same time, she couldn’t just make her feelings of embarrassment go away. Growing up, Alix had thought Jalil was brilliant… right up until her _petite_ class took a trip to the Louvre. She had told the rest of the class that her father worked for the Louvre, and her big brother thought the pyramid right in front of the museum was actually an alien GPS. The teacher had given her a condescending pat on the forehead and told her to be quiet and not make up stories. The rest of the class had burst out laughing.

Since then she had humored Jalil’s “theories,” but she hadn’t given them any credence. Obviously the pyramids weren’t alien spaceships. There was no way that the Nazca Lines were drawn by giant children playing in the dirt. The Grand Canyon was a natural phenomenon; it couldn’t possibly have been caused by an alien battle that smashed apart a continent. At a certain point Jalil’s ideas had just stopped registering in her mind. And for the last decade she’d tried to keep him as far away from her friends as she could. So many of her friends were athletic and he was… not, so it wasn’t really that hard – she hardly ever told her newer friends that she even _had_ a brother! Oh, she loved him of course; she just didn’t think her friends would accept him – some days _she_ even struggled in that regard.

She shook her head at the irony of it as she descended the stairs to the basement Acquisitions section. She snapped at Jalil, and Max and Sabrina actually weren’t put off by his preposterous idea this time! And Max even wanted a chance to look into it for himself.

She never would have pegged either of them for being members of the Heroes of Paris, and yet with the benefit of hindsight it seemed pretty obvious. After all, that would explain why it seemed like Sabrina always knew what she was feeling – she could literally read emotions! It explained why Max and Sabrina started dating out of the blue during Spring Break… at the same time that Pegasus and Impératrice Pourpre started getting cozy, right after Alix had joined the Heroes of Paris as Sk8r Girl. And it explained Impératrice Pourpre’s single-minded focus on rescuing Chloe, even as Sabrina practically disappeared for the duration of Spring Break. In all honesty, Alix should have put the pieces together a whole lot sooner; the only reason she _hadn’t_ was because she had been trying to preserve her own secret identity, without the benefit of a miraculous to alter her appearance.

A large man with a darker complexion pushed past Alix on the stairs. Though the man looked vaguely familiar from her tour group, she couldn’t quite place him. That was odd: visitors weren’t supposed to be in this area. On reaching the foot of the stairs, Alix’s frowned deepened. Normally the door to Acquisitions was kept closed to help preserve the artifacts and prevent dust from the room from getting out into the rest of the museum; at the moment, the door was swinging open on its hinges and a cloud of dust was swirling around the entrance, carried by the breeze from the overhead fans. Although the lights were on, she couldn’t hear anyone moving around in the room.

“Jalil?” she called hesitantly, just outside the door. “It’s me. I–I brought you some lunch.” She peeked around the doorframe, and her jaw dropped to the floor in shock. “What the actual hell…”

A figure stood most of the way down the aisle, facing the remains of a shipping crate to one side, surrounded by dust and reddish stones. It was Jalil – or at least it could only be Jalil. He was wearing the same tweed jacket that Jalil always wore at the Louvre, the same jeans he’d had on that morning – covered in fine grey dust. The hair color was the same, the build was the same. And yet he held himself differently: instead of slouching, he stood up to his full height. The posture was confident, commanding.

But then he turned toward her and she saw his face.

The face looking back at her was not the same one she had become so familiar with. The eyes were a different shape, the nose was a little bigger, the mouth was wider. Jalil had never been able to grow facial hair, but now he had a long, straight beard. And his face was pure gold. It looked like a mask, but the mouth and eyes moved as he regarded her across the room.

“Jalil?” she called, holding up the café bag and staring at him wide-eyed.

The figure waved a hand at her dismissively. A swirl of dust picked up in front of him and whipped down the corridor, scattering papers and dust in its wake. Alix had no chance to react before the wind gust picked her up and flung her back through the doorway. Her back slammed into the wall opposite the door, she felt the tiles crack behind her back, and she slid dumbly to the floor.

_What the hell just happened!?!_

Alix pulled herself together when a shadow fell over her from above. She looked up to find the figure – this couldn’t possibly be Jalil! – standing over her. She opened her mouth to speak, but could do nothing but stare up at him. She looked at the places where his eyes should have been, and her own eyes widened in shock. The gold within the eye sockets was glowing! It turned to a bright white as she watched. She couldn’t look away, couldn’t blink, couldn’t move at all, couldn’t…

Alix couldn’t see. Her vision was entirely white – whether her eyes were open or closed, it didn’t make any difference. She could sense the figure still standing over her. Without any hesitation she reached over, found her wristwatch, and pressed the emergency button on the side. Some superhero _she_ was at the moment: there was nothing she could do about this… monster. All she could do was _hope_ Pegasus’ (Max’s) alert-thing actually worked.

She held her breath until she heard footsteps walking away. It was Jalil’s tread… but it did not sound like his gait. Alix pulled her knees up to her chin, hugged her legs, and blinked her eyes furiously, hoping against hope that she might see again.

What had happened to Jalil? Was he still in there? Who – or _what_ – was standing and walking around in her brother’s body? And how on earth was that creature able to fling her across a room and blind her like it was nothing?

Was it her fault?

Just as the whiteness in her eyes began to show spots of color and flicker into some semblance of focus, she heard three sets of footsteps tramping down the stairs. The footsteps seemed to hesitate, but then one set raced ahead of the others toward her. Someone dropped to the floor right in front of her and put a hand on Alix’s shoulder. “Alix?” Sabrina’s voice whispered next to her ear. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“It’s Jalil!” she answered, hating the way her voice trembled. Alix Kubdel did not get scared! She blinked her eyes several more times and finally the shape of Sabrina’s face came into focus, fuzzy and centimeters in front of her own. “It’s Jalil… or it’s _not_ him… I don’t know… something happened to him and he attacked me. I–”

“We know,” Sabrina told her soothingly. “We saw him.”

Alix took in a slow breath and looked past Sabrina to see a dark shape that had to be Max walking confidently into the Acquisitions room, Markov hovering by his head. He walked straight to the pile of dust and stones on the floor, knelt, and started scooping some of it into a container that Markov extended from his chassis. At that same moment the museum address system activated. Alix’s dad’s voice announced, “All visitors, please evacuate through the nearest exit. This is not a drill.”

Alix stifled a groan. It had been over a year since the last time her dad had to make that particular announcement. And once again it was about Jalil. But this time Alix was the one who pushed him.

As the announcement faded, Max’s voice carried out to them. “It is unfortunate that Adrien has not authorized us to purchase the electron spectrometer yet,” he told Markov. “A full analysis of this stone could prove invaluable.”

“Perhaps PSL will allow you to use theirs for now,” suggested Markov.

“Well this worked out just great,” Chloe observed from her spot near the bottom of the stairs fiddling with a yellow-and-black yo-yo. “And I thought _I_ was the queen of accidentally creating super-villains!”

“Chloe,” warned Sabrina, half-heartedly.

“No, she’s not exactly wrong,” Alix muttered, brushing off Sabrina’s hand and pushing herself up to her feet. “This never would have happened if I hadn’t blown up at him like that.”

“You may have made him angry,” Sabrina pointed out, “but ultimately he’s the one who did whatever he did.”

“And whatever he did is far more serious than we could ever have calculated or anticipated,” Max added, joining them in the corridor. He held out two pieces of the destroyed obelisk and fit them together carefully.

Alix examined it closely. “I recognize these hieroglyphics,” she said, surprised. “They were on the scroll that got Jalil Akumatized three years ago. But I don’t remember what they mean.”

Max looked at her grimly. “According to the database, this sequence of symbols has appeared only a handful of times in ancient Egyptian writings. And in each instance the context makes clear that it translates as ‘Ladybug.’ So that makes this a likely Miraculous problem.”

Alix met his gaze and told him, “You’re forgetting that this ‘problem’ is my brother. That makes it _definitely_ my problem.”

Max nodded and glanced at the screen extending from Markov. “Unfortunately, security footage shows that your brother has vacated the premises. And he was not alone when he left. There was an unknown miraculous user with him.”

“Any idea where he went?” Alix asked, eyes setting in determination.

Max shook his head.

“Well, it seems pretty obvious what our next move is,” Chloe commented, walking over to rejoin the others. “The two of you do your thing to find him, and the two of us do our thing to kick his ass.”

Max nodded in agreement and transformed. Opening a portal, he beckoned to Sabrina, who stepped through before him. “We will let you know when we have something,” he promised, before the portal closed behind them.

“We’re not calling Ladybug and Cat Noir?” Alix asked, arching an eyebrow at Chloe.

Chloe shook her head. “With how busy their summer is? If it’s too much for us, we’ll call them in. Or more likely they’ll already know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PSL is Université Paris Sciences et Lettres. I can’t find if they actually have an electron spectrometer, but they do a lot of research so it’s entirely possible.


	5. Chapter 5

Jalil didn’t know how long he had been out. Or remember what had happened before he lost consciousness. Or understand where he was at that moment. All he knew was that he felt like he was floating in saltwater. His head was splitting open, like it was too small for his mind, like there was something else trying to occupy the same space. The last thing he remembered was a voice… and a mask… and gold. Come to think of it, _everything_ was gold.

He had put on the mask he’d found inside the obelisk!

He tried to move his head, but it would not respond to his commands. He tried to remove the mask from his head, but his hands were no longer under his control. Even his _lungs_ weren’t responding to him! Jalil’s mind raced with panic. He was trapped inside his own mind!

There was another presence there with him. “ _I suppose I should be thanking you_ ,” an eerily-familiar voice observed in his mind.

The voice that had told him to put on the mask. “ _Are–are you an alien?_ ” he asked, trembling.

“ _An alien?_ ” The voice sounded amused. “ _What a silly notion. Of course I’m not an alien._ ”

“ _Then… what are you?_ ”

“ _Why don’t you call me ‘Amun’?_ ” the voice answered. Jalil could still detect a hint of humor. “ _That is the name they gave me – or the god with whom they conflated me. Ordinary men have never truly understood the extraordinary._ ”

“ _Wait, ‘Amun’ as in the god?_ ” he asked. “ _Are you Amun-Re?_ ”

The voice – Amun – actually laughed at that. The golden landscape surrounding Jalil’s consciousness shook with its mirth. “ _You mean they combined Amun and Re?_ ” asked the voice. “ _Oh, as far as you’re concerned, I suppose I may as well be._ ”

“ _What’s going on?_ ”

The gold around him shifted and Jalil found himself looking out of different eyes. Somehow he knew that the eyes belonged to a young boy, reading in a scroll. The language appeared to be a form of proto-Egyptian hieroglyphics. Though Jalil knew that he had never studied these glyphs, he found that he could read the scroll clearly. The boy looked up from the scroll, closed his eyes, and blew. As the puff of air left him, the wind around the boy picked up. The boy grinned and clapped his hands, and a small tornado formed on the desk in front of him.

Suddenly the scene changed. Jalil was still that same boy, but now grown up. He was stronger, taller, wearing white robes and holding his hands out, standing on a cliff looking out over a valley. Masses of people were gathered below him, filling the valley as far as the eye could see. Winds rushed and swirled around him. Lightning cracked. Light pulsed outward from his body. The people shouted out to him and fell down around him.

The image shifted again, and he was now engulfed in a sandstorm, floating far above the ground and staring down at colorful shapes that writhed and moved around him. He was the same man as before, but this time he felt older. He had a long white beard, waxed into a sharp rectangular shape. Something tawny hurtled through the storm, sunk sharpened claws into his chest, and hurled him to the ground. Even in the memory, Jalil winced as the air was forced from his lungs by the impact. The tawny creature landed on top of him and lifted a gold short sword above its head. Jalil held out his hand and a transparent white geometric shield appeared in front of him moments before the sword clashed against it. Jalil held his arm steady as the tawny figure pushed against the shield’s resistance with all its might. An indigo presence invaded his mind, and the shield flickered away. He felt a sudden sharp pain in his chest, and looked down to find the sword sticking out from between two ribs. The hand that touched the spot came away slick with blood. The tawny form disappeared to be replaced by red and black. There was a flash of gold, and then nothing.

“ _What–?_ ”

The voice – Amun – seemed to roll his eyes. “ _That was the last thing I remember before you freed me from my imprisonment,_ ” he explained. “ _They came to stop me, and rather than accept my fate, I preserved my consciousness within the mask. They thought that some secrets were too dangerous. They thought_ I _was too dangerous._ ” He laughed. “ _In their defense, I suppose I_ was _dangerous…_ ”

“ _What–what are you going to do with me?_ ”

“ _What_ should _I do with you?_ ” Amun asked, with some disinterest. “ _Other than use you as my avatar, that is._ ”

“ _Please… what is happening? What are you doing with me?_ ”

The golden haze around Jalil faded and he found himself back in his own body, looking out of his own eyes. He tried to raise his hand to feel his face, but his hand wouldn’t move.

“ _Why should_ you _be in control?_ ” Amun asked wryly. “ _What have_ you _ever done, child?_ ”

Jalil was standing in the Ancient Egypt exhibit of the Louvre, studying a display case full of tablets and scrolls. His body leaned over to study one more closely.

“ _You think you understand this scroll?_ ” Amun asked with a snort. “ _Your knowledge of hieroglyphics is laughable. This has nothing to do with funerary rites; it has everything to do with the method by which they imprisoned me._ ”

“ _I_ knew _there was something unusual about that one!_ ” Jalil shouted exultantly. “ _Dad thought I was being crazy!_ ”

Amun scoffed. “ _And yet you somehow thought it had to do with lucky insects. Now this one here?_ ” His body nodded to the scroll next to it. “ _That hieroglyphic is most definitely not the symbol for ‘water.’ That is the symbol for ‘aether.’_ ”

“ _What? But ‘aether’ doesn’t make any sense in the context…_ ” Jalil argued.

“ _What would you understand of this?_ ” Amun retorted. “ _You are a child playing with books. This is my_ language _we are discussing here!_ ”

Jalil’s body turned to look at a cabinet full of artifacts. “ _Your historians actually think that this type of pot was used for religious purification rituals? We drank out of those!_ ”

A small group of visitors walked into the room and gasped on seeing Jalil’s body standing in the middle of the room. Jalil’s body waved a hand at them and blew them away.

“ _What did you do that for?_ ” Jalil demanded. “ _They weren’t doing anything wrong!_ ”

“ _You care about these insignificant people?_ ” Amun asked in some surprise. “ _These are the same people who would laugh at your theories._ ”

“ _I know,_ ” he acknowledged. “ _That doesn’t mean you can hurt them._ ”

Amun laughed so hard Jalil’s body shook with it. “ _Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot do? You are a little two-bit historian with delusions of grandeur; I have harnessed the power of a god!_ ”

Jalil gasped as his surroundings, his senses, even his body faded around him. He was sucked back into the goldenness. Suddenly his surroundings changed and he was back in an image, this one familiar. He was in his own body, surrounded by the debris of the obelisk. Pieces of red stone crunched beneath his feet. Dust clung to his clothes. A familiar-looking set of glyphs stood out to him on a cracked piece of the obelisk, coated with a fine layer of dust.

“Jalil?”

He started at hearing Alix’s voice in his mind. And then his hand moved of its own accord and slammed her into the wall with a gust of wind. His body stalked over to her and seared her eyes with the intensity of its gaze, rendering her blind.

“ _Why did you do that to her?_ ” Jalil shouted angrily as the vision faded and he returned to the golden space within his mindscape.

“ _You’re upset by that?_ ” Amun asked, surprised. “ _She insulted you. She said you were insane. She thought you were as cracked as the obelisk is now. You were angry at her when you picked up my mask._ ”

“ _Not enough to hurt her! I would never hurt Alix!_ ”

Amun scoffed. “ _She is a lesser intelligence, no different from these other insects. All of these people exist for no other purpose but to serve me._ ”

“No!” Jalil shouted, his own voice echoing through the deserted exhibit hall. Suddenly he was thrust back into control of his body. He took in a gasping breath, only to feel his lungs close off. He tried to turn his wrist but it would not turn; it quivered and shook as Amun fought him for control of his muscles. He felt his foot starting to lift, and put all his effort into keeping his leg still. Amun struggled to make him move, and Jalil struggled valiantly to keep his body perfectly rigid. And yet, it was a losing battle – Jalil knew it, and so did Amun, as Jalil could tell from the scornful laughter ringing in his mind. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, Jalil felt his consciousness being beaten back, pushed to the side of his own mind, as Amun wrested control of his body back away from him. Amun’s consciousness formed into a whip and lashed at Jalil psychically. Jalil grabbed onto whatever mental handhold he could find, even as his consciousness split under the pain of a building migraine. All he could do was cling to a memory of himself watching Alix at her first race and pray for it to end. When Amun finally grew bored, Jalil crawled slowly across the golden mindscape to the spot where his vision was. Amun seemed cognizant of his actions, but to find his presence to be little more than an amusing inconvenience. Jalil had no control over his body; all he could do was watch out of his own eyes to see what Amun would do with his body.

His body had fallen over onto all fours as Amun fought to regain control. Amum took in a calming breath and blinked a couple of times before becoming aware of another presence. They were no longer alone in the Ancient Egypt room. Someone stood in front of him: he looked up to see a pair of black leggings that led up to a girl in a black bodysuit with a single yellow stripe around the abdomen. A black mask covered her eyes. Her hair was long and streaked in black and yellow. She looked down at him in disgust. “So what are _you_ supposed to be?” the stranger asked.

“You are addressing the avatar of Amun!” Amun declared. “Bow, mortal!”

“‘Bow, mortal’?” the girl asked, nonplussed. “That’s cute.”

“Are you going to attempt to stop me?”

She laughed derisively. “Now why would I want to do a silly thing like that?” she asked, placing a hand on her hip. “I don’t want to _stop_ you. I saw what you did before, and you’ve got some power. Of course, you don’t stand a chance against the Heroes of Paris. Not on your own.”

“ _She’s got_ that _right,_ ” Jalil commented, with a little more confidence than he felt. “ _The Heroes of Paris will stop you!_ ”

Amun snorted. “ _If they try that, they will just be hurting_ you _,_ ” he retorted. “ _In my experience, these hero-types are all the same: they don’t want to hurt the little people. As long as I have you as my avatar, they won’t do anything to me._ ” Aloud he asked, “And what are you proposing, child?”

“It’s simple,” answered the stranger. “My people can help you; you can help us. You get to cause all the destruction you want, and we’ll keep you safe from the Heroes of Paris.”

“You would recruit a _god_ to work for you as an errand boy?” he demanded, pushing himself up to Jalil’s full height and staring down at her imperiously. “I think not. A god has no need for such as you!”

The stranger laughed. “Tell you what: think it over,” she told him. “You can join us willingly… or I can always Sting you, hogtie you in my top, and drag you back home. Your choice.”

“I dare you to try,” he responded, striding past her and out the museum doors into the bright afternoon sunlight.


	6. Chapter 6

Alix was moving on autopilot while she collected her Sk8r Girl equipment out of its trunk in the back of her closet. Something had happened to Jalil, and for all she knew he was gone. And it was her fault. She pulled her reinforced grey leggings on and laced up her skate-shoes (now that she knew _Max_ was the one who designed these things, she could tell him off properly for whatever had happened with the _first_ pair!). The sky-blue padded shirt went on next, followed by her helmet with the Mkufu wa Wanyama (“Animal Necklace”) incorporated into its padding. With the press of a button the communicator built into her helmet activated. She grabbed her elbow pads, gloves, belt, and field hockey stick and was running out the door as Pegasus’ voice came over the communicator.

“I have located Jalil,” Pegasus reported. “He has destroyed a number of security cameras in some manner – the feed appeared to overload with light and burn out – but the trajectory of the destroyed cameras is across the river in the direction of the Eiffel Tower.”

“Of course it is,” Sk8r Girl deadpanned, jamming her pads on and flexing her elbows as the apartment building’s door slammed shut behind her. “Why _wouldn’t_ someone go to the Eiffel Tower? Um… any clues on what his plan is?”

“Negative,” answered Pegasus. “I have only seen one image of him since he left the museum. He was floating down the street in the center of a column of air, not unlike Night Bat’s method of flying.”

“Well that’s just spectacular.” Sk8r Girl grimaced. She deployed her skates and took off toward the Eiffel Tower. “Where’s Chloe?”

“Sent-Bee is en route and will rendezvous with you approximately four blocks from the Tower.”

Sk8r Girl pursed her lips. What were she and Chloe – a pair of basically-non-powered heroes – supposed to do against not-Jalil? He had blown her across the room like a dry leaf. He had seared her retinas with a look. And now he was floating around on air. And there was someone else with him – possibly one of the criminal miraculous users they’d been fighting for months. What was the deal there? How was she ever going to fight against her brother – if Jalil was even still in there? Because whoever or whatever had attacked her in Acquisitions, it had _not_ been her brother!

She looked up to see a trio of hawks circling overhead and frowned in contemplation. She hadn’t had much success before, but… “Hey!” she shouted at them. “I could use a little help down here!”

One of the hawks drifted down until it was only a couple meters above her head. The hawk fixed its piercing gaze on her and asked, “Oh, you need some help? And why should we help you?”

Sk8r Girl glared back at the hawk from behind her tinted visor. “Look, Bird Brain,” she growled, drifting to one side of the sidewalk to avoid a pedestrian, “my brother is out there doing who-knows-what and floating around on a column of air. You know what that means? He can control the thing you use to fly! What do you think will happen to you and your buddies if he decides to throw a gust of air in _your_ direction?”

“You mean that creature was with _you_?” the hawk demanded indignantly, flaring its wings out. “He tried to knock me out of the sky for _fun_!”

“Yeah, he is,” she replied curtly, “and I’m on my way to stop him. Now are you going to help me, or are you going to waste my time?”

“What do you need from us?”

“Just tell me where he is.”

The hawk let out a shriek that sounded like laughter. “Gold-Face is hovering around the middle of the giant tower,” it told her.

“Great. Now let me know if he leaves or if he does anything exciting,” she instructed the hawk, which caught an updraft and soared back up to rejoin its companions. The three hawks separated, with the first one remaining above Sk8r Girl while the others peeled off to either side.

“Super,” she muttered. “I’m going to fight not-Jalil, but at least I’ve got a couple _hawks_ on my side…”

A figure in yellow and black holding a tiny dog in her hands was waiting for Sk8r Girl on the next street corner. Sent-Bee wore black Capris made from the same fabric as Sk8r Girl’s suit, a yellow jacket with a jagged black stripe encircling it, and a black helmet outwardly-identical to Sk8r Girl’s own but with her blonde ponytail sticking out of a hole near the back. She had been fiddling with a yellow-and-black yo-yo while waiting, but replaced it in a pouch on her belt next to a holster as Sk8r Girl shot past her. Sk8r Girl slowed down marginally as Sent-Bee raced to keep up with her.

“You brought Bee?” Sk8r Girl asked, raising an eyebrow under her helmet and nodding toward the puppy yipping excitedly under Sent-Bee’s arm.

“Considering that _she_ ’s taken out about as many Lynchpin goons as _you_ have, _Bee_ ’s as much a member of the team as you are!” Sent-Bee retorted, tossing her hair so it caught in the wind rushing past them. “To leave her behind would be ridiculous!”

“I’m a hero-dog!” Bee-atrice barked, tail wagging in excitement.

“Please,” Sk8r Girl retorted. “You’re not a _hero_ ; you’re a _dorable_!”

“It is so weird when you do that,” muttered Sent-Bee, shaking her head. “I hope she’s not saying anything bad about _me_.”

Sk8r Girl smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

The two heroes raced down the street side-by-side in the direction of the Eiffel Tower looming over the city in the distance. Sk8r Girl could hear quiet voices around them from the pigeons and squirrels watching them pass. Bee-atrice would occasionally bark at them, but without actually saying anything as often as not. Sk8r Girl glanced up at the hawk above her, which had since been joined by another couple of birds. “Anything going on up there?” she called.

The hawk dove toward her, flaring out his wings and pulling out of the dive a meter above her. Bee-atrice growled at the hawk. “I won’t let you hurt my people!” the puppy barked.

“I will feed you to my children!” retorted the hawk before turning to Sk8r Girl. “A block ahead of you there is a colorful figure that I have never seen before sitting on a roof. He appears to be waiting for you.”

“We’ve got company,” Sk8r Girl announced to Sent-Bee. To the hawk she asked, “Do you think you can startle him off the roof when we get close?”

With a scornful call, the hawk spread its wings and shot back up to glide above the rooftops. Sk8r Girl glanced over at Sent-Bee, who was looking at her with some confusion. Surreptitiously, Sk8r Girl pointed at the indicated roof, where she could just make out a figure in purple or indigo. Sent-Bee nodded silently and allowed the hand not holding Bee to drift down to the holster resting on her hip.

The two heroes were just crossing the street beneath the mysterious person when a pair of hawks let out a piercing shriek and rocketed out of the sky directly at his head. The man looked up at them in shock, rolled backward away from them, toward the edge of the roof, and dropped to the ground. He landed a moment before Sk8r Girl and Sent-Bee reached him. Standing a full head taller than either of them and built like a professional wrestler, he wore an indigo full-body suit and an indigo headband with a silver beetle set in the center. The two heroes were on him in an instant.

“Who are you?” demanded Sent-Bee, pointing her squirt gun at his face.

“What did you do to my brother?” shouted Sk8r Girl, pushing him into the wall with her field hockey stick at his throat.

The man looked at them in confusion until Sk8r Girl repeated the questions in English. “I did nothing to your brother!” he protested, holding his hands up. “I was trying to _stop_ him!”

“You had better start talking,” Sk8r Girl growled, glaring at him through her visor. She separated her stick into its two pieces and activated one’s taser next to his head threateningly, while still holding the other to his throat.

“I was at your museum today searching for a relic that we had lost,” the man explained. He gestured to the stick at his throat. “Could you move this, please? I _could_ , but I would rather not.”

“I doubt that,” retorted Sk8r Girl, dropping her hands to her sides in a huff. “What was that relic? And what did it do to my brother?”

The man sighed and turned to walk in the direction of the Eiffel Tower, the two heroes taking up positions on either side of him. “That relic is… difficult to explain,” he began. “You are familiar with the miraculous, yes?”

“Oh, son of a bitch,” Sent-Bee cursed. “You are _another_ miraculous user, and that thing on his head is a rogue miraculous of some sort, did I get that right?”

“Yes to the first,” the stranger replied calmly, “but no to the second. I am Jueran Eazim.” He gestured to the beetle on his headband. “Millennia ago one of my predecessors assisted in trapping an evil sorcerer inside an obelisk to contain his power.”

The communicator in Sk8r Girl’s helmet came to life. “The obelisk bears a striking resemblance to Ladybug’s Lucky Charm on a molecular level,” Pegasus reported.

“What does this obelisk have to do with Ladybug?” Sent-Bee asked.

Jueran Eazim’s eyes widened in surprise. “The Ladybug of the time created the obelisk,” he replied. “My predecessor and her counterpart subdued the sorcerer so the Ladybug could contain him. Unfortunately, the obelisk was lost in transport several centuries ago, and we only learned too late that it had been discovered and brought to your Louvre.”

“So what is this thing doing to my brother, and how do we stop it?” demanded Sk8r Girl, reconnecting her stick and folding her arms across her chest.

Jueran Eazim grimaced. “I do not know for certain,” he responded. “The knowledge of the sorcerer and his power was carved into the obelisk, which your brother broke. However, from what our lore states, the sorcerer’s consciousness lived on within the obelisk. Once the obelisk was destroyed, the sorcerer must have sought to latch onto a host. His consciousness will drive out the host’s consciousness, taking control of the body.”

Sk8r Girl’s jaw dropped open in shock. Jalil’s consciousness would be gone? He would lose control of his own body!?! Fearing the answer she asked, “So what do we do to stop it?”

“I may be able to use my power to force the foreign consciousness out of him,” replied Jueran Eazim. “But that will only work if the sorcerer’s consciousness has not fully taken hold. The longer the sorcerer’s consciousness is fused to your brother’s body, the harder it will be to remove. If we are too late, I fear the only option will be the original solution: imprison the sorcerer once more. If, that is, your Ladybug is up to the task.”

“You mean my brother might be gone!?!” Sk8r Girl shouted.

Sent-Bee placed a hand on her shoulder. “Not if we have anything to do with it,” she declared. “But we will find out soon enough.”

Sk8r Girl looked up just as they crossed the street to enter the Champ de Mars and raced down the eerily deserted park toward the Tower. Not-Jalil was hovering in midair on a column of air next to the Eiffel Tower. It was difficult to make out exactly what he was doing, but she could just distinguish a pattern of light shapes hovering around him, shifting and swirling through different designs. As she watched, one of the light shapes took the form of a sideways hashtag which expanded until he could hover in the middle of it.

“I don’t believe it,” breathed Sent-Bee.

Sk8r Girl glanced at her in surprise, but she wasn’t looking at not-Jalil. Instead, she was staring at a figure in black standing beneath him. Looking closer, this stranger’s suit wasn’t entirely black; there was a yellow stripe around her chest, and her hair was streaked with black and yellow. And she seemed to be holding a yellow top. Sk8r Girl’s eyes widened in recognition.

Sent-Bee growled to match Bee-atrice. “That Bee-tch is mine!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Jueran Eazim” is Arabic for “Great Scarab.” If you recall, that is the traditional name of the Scarab Miraculous holder (in [“Running out of Time”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23611723/chapters/56995384)). The leaders of the Miraculous Teams (the holders of the two most-powerful miraculous in each set) have traditional names that only vary by translation – hence every historical Ladybug or Cat Noir’s name has just been a translation of “Ladybug” or “Black Cat.”
> 
> The last story in which Sk8r Girl used the Mkufu wa Wanyama was “The Queen is Dead: Mission Logs” [chapter 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24791269/chapters/60004264) (“Mkufu wa Wanyama”).


	7. Chapter 7

Still a prisoner within his own mind, Jalil watched helplessly as Amun summoned the air and pushed himself off the ground, hovering in the center of a small tornado once he had reached the museum doors. Amun propelled himself forward, floating above the glass pyramid outside the Louvre. Amun held out his arms, and a gust of wind picked up from beneath him, blowing him higher and pushing him toward the river. Beneath them, Jalil could just barely see the figure in black following them at her own pace, swinging from building to building.

“ _Where are you taking us?_ ” Jalil asked. “ _What are you going to do?_ ”

“ _I must be seen to gain followers once more,_ ” Amun replied calmly. “ _Your entire city must see what I am capable of!_ ”

As they floated over the river, Amun began moving his hands in a complicated pattern. Jalil watched in fascination as light emitted from his hands and formed into solid shapes. At first, the light formed nothing more than circles and triangles, but over time the shapes grew in their complexity. “ _What are you doing?_ ” he wondered.

“ _Did you think the light with which I blinded your foolish sister was only good for that puerile application?_ ” asked Amum arrogantly. “ _The same power which enables the light to blind my enemies can also forge the light into a powerful weapon._ ” To prove the point, Amun drew his hands together and spread them apart, forming a solid beam of light which he could hold in one hand.

“ _Impressive,_ ” commented Jalil wryly. “ _But not_ that _impressive._ ”

Amun scoffed. “ _I am unaccustomed to the limitations of your body,_ ” he retorted. “ _We shall see how impressive my abilities are in time, when your body is entirely mine._ ”

A cold dread took hold of Jalil’s consciousness on hearing that. “ _And what happens to_ me _when that happens_?”

Amun did not answer beyond a mirthful chuckle, but instead pushed himself higher on his column of air, continuing to experiment with his light manipulation. The shapes took on greater definition under Amun’s direction. However, Jalil noticed a gradual lightening of the pressure on his consciousness. The more effort Amun put into his magic, the less effort he could devote to maintaining his stranglehold on Jalil’s consciousness. Perhaps he could regain some measure of control over his own body if Amun were sufficiently distracted. He had to test the theory, but not with something that Amun would notice. With a herculean effort, he concentrated on the muscles of his nose. He could feel them moving the slightest bit as Amun breathed. He couldn’t interfere with his breathing – Amun would certainly notice something like that. But could he twitch his nose? Amun shaped something that looked like a bowtie – two triangles touching at the point – from light, and at the same moment Jalil concentrated on flaring his nostrils.

His nose moved the tiniest fraction of a millimeter.

Heartened by his success, he turned back to Amun’s presence in his mind. “ _So what is it that you want?_ ” he asked again, more forcefully this time.

“ _I want the same thing you want,_ ” Amun replied with some amusement. “ _I want the world to acknowledge my greatness! That is all you have ever desired, is it not?_ ”

“ _Yes,_ ” Jalil admitted quietly, watching the people below them flee from the Champ de Mars in terror. A teenager grabbed his sister by the hand and pulled her along behind him as they crossed the avenue away from the Eiffel Tower. “ _I_ did _want recognition. But not like this._ Never _like this._ ”

“ _Soon the whole world will bow to my power!_ ” Amun declared, drawing a series of lines in the air and forming a cross-work pattern of light. Jalil touched Amun’s consciousness and saw the intended pattern clearly: something he called a “Finger of Protection.” Amun repeated the move twice more and spread his arms, expanding the “Fingers of Protection” until the square in the center was larger than his own body. Amun moved them to encompass himself and spin on different planes, creating a barrier of solid light around himself. Satisfied, he drew a jagged line of light in the air.

Amun was unprepared for the ball hurled at his head.

“Hey, loser!” a familiar voice shouted from below as the ball disintegrated against Amun’s Fingers of Protection. “No one gets to mess with him but me!”

Amun looked down at the ground below them where a quartet of figures stood. The stranger in black appeared to be fighting someone else wearing yellow and black. The sky-blue girl with the familiar voice staring up at him from behind a crash helmet looked vaguely familiar to Jalil – from what he could recall, she was called “Sk8r Girl.” And as his eyes fell on the final figure, this one wearing deep indigo, Jalil felt a ripple of anxiety run through Amun’s consciousness.

“ _Have we found someone that you fear?_ ” Jalil asked smugly. “ _The great and mighty pseudo-god Amun is afraid of that person down there?_ ”

“ _I know of what the Great Scarab may be capable,_ ” Amun replied evenly. “ _But this one is alone without his backup. And I am not defenseless against him!_ ” He drew his hands together and pulled them apart, forming a beam of light which he hurled at the Great Scarab, who drew a silver ankh from his back. He deflected the attack away from himself to rebound into a tree on the far side of the park which incinerated the moment the light beam touched it. But before that light beam had reached its target, Amun had already repeated the gesture, this one aimed at Sk8r Girl, who shot forward on her skates to avoid repeated attacks. Something about her movement reminded Jalil of someone he knew…

But Amun was distracted.

Jalil concentrated with all his might on his hands, and stopped Amun’s arms from moving entirely. The moment lasted less than a fraction of a second, but in that time Amun’s Fingers of Protection flickered out of existence and the wind keeping him in the air dropped by half. Amun fell from the sky with a bellow – both psychic and auditory – of rage. Jalil ducked for cover behind a small sphinx shape that appeared from nowhere in his mindscape.

Amun pushed downward with a burst of air and caught himself moments before he would have struck the ground. He tumbled to the pavement, rolled over, and pushed himself to his feet to meet a headlong attack from Sk8r Girl, who aimed a blow from her field hockey stick at his chest. Amun formed a light-shield to deflect the strike.

Jalil, however, did not get to witness the further results of his action, as Amun’s consciousness lashed him with a golden psychic whip repeatedly, battering away his meager protection. The sphinx behind which he sheltered shattered under the assault, the head falling off and through the embodiment of Jalil’s consciousness. He fled from its dwindling safety. He could feel his consciousness fading as the golden presence within his mind bore down on him and pushed him into the corner, looming over him. The golden mindscape crackled with psychic lightning as the rest of the area grew dark, and Amun pushed Jalil back, away from the edge, away from where he could see what was happening around them. Amun loomed large and imposing over him. There was no escaping from his power this time. Jalil huddled within himself to wait for the pain to end.

The bright indigo light appearing within the darkened golden mindscape opposite Amun’s presence caught Jalil entirely off-guard.

Mentally, Jalil picked himself up and pulled the shattered pieces of his psyche back together into a cohesive whole as the indigo light resolved itself into a human shape. As the indigo person took up a position between Jalil and Amun within the mindscape, Jalil realized that he recognized the mental presence. “ _You…_ ”

“ _I am sorry that my intervention was not more timely,_ ” the person told him quietly. “ _But we have little time._ ”

“ _YOU!_ ” shouted Amun in a rage, his presence consolidating into a golden human shape of equal size. “ _Another Scarab!_ ”

“ _My predecessor imprisoned you once, sorcerer,_ ” the Great Scarab declared, his mental image growing larger. “ _I shall do so again!_ ”

Indigo met Gold in a mass of confusion and color as the two mental forms grappled. The two psyches swirled around each other, lashing each other with mental lightning, battering away at each other in psychic attacks. Indigo grabbed Gold around the legs, picked him up, and slammed him to the ground before landing on his chest, an ankh appearing in his hand.

Jalil turned away from them and crawled back to his connection to the world outside his body to find that Amun, though occupied in his psychic battle against the Great Scarab, was still using his body to fight against Sk8r Girl. Sk8r Girl had separated her field hockey stick and was swinging at Amun from both sides simultaneously. Amun for his part had formed a pair of light-shields with which to block the repeated blows. Amun stepped back from her, shielding himself with one hand, and drew a shape of two rectangles in the form of a cross, which he hurled spinning at her head. Sk8r Girl ducked beneath the construct and let out a birdlike shriek. A pair of answering shrieks from above was all the warning Amun received before a trio of hawks dove from the sky, battering him with their wings and scratching at his eyes with their claws. Amun summoned his bird construct back to himself, and the hawks scattered in all directions moments before it would have struck them. The light absorbed back into Amun’s hand, and he flicked his wrist, shifting it into the form of a whip.

Jalil heard a cry of pain from within his mind and turned away from his eyes to see the golden Amun repeatedly smashing the indigo Great Scarab in the face with his fists and lashing him repeatedly with golden lightning. The Great Scarab met Jalil’s eye and gave him a look of regret before blinking out of existence.

Jalil made himself as small as he could, hiding in the same position where he could look out at the world around him. He could see the Great Scarab standing several meters away from them. His eyes blinked open and he dropped to the ground on his hands and knees, gasping for breath. Sk8r Girl, tufts of pink hair sticking out of cracks in her helmet, hurled a field hockey ball at Amun’s head, which Amun instantly repelled with a burst of air, sending it straight back at Sk8r Girl’s gut. She dove to the side but stumbled over one discarded half of her field hockey stick and fell to the ground on her back. Her helmet fell off, and Jalil finally recognized her.

“ _I should have realized it was Alix,_ ” he whispered.

“ _Now you will witness what happens to all who dare to oppose me,_ ” Amun told him triumphantly.

Amun knelt over Alix, who was glaring up at him angrily. Amun drew a shape in the air which formed into a light-dagger, and grabbed it in one hand. Jalil could feel his face grinning as Amun raised the light-dagger over his head, ready to plunge it into Alix’s heart.

“NO!” Jalil shouted, pushing with all his might. The dagger struck home, less than a centimeter from Alix’s chest.


	8. Chapter 8

All Chloe had wanted to do that morning was hang out with her best friend and relax after a long Heroes’ Day spent shaking hands and taking pictures and, occasionally, breaking up a family argument over which hero was better. And then, after all the Heroes’ Day festivities were over, Anansi had cornered her near Notre Dame and the two of them had spent nearly three hours sparring – their longest training session since Anansi had agreed to train her after Spring Break. She’d called Sabrina and invited her to the mall: get their nails done, buy a new outfit, maybe beat up a dumbass hooligan or two like last time. If she was lucky. What had Sabrina had in mind instead? She had already agreed to go to the Louvre with Max, and she invited Chloe to come along. _Ridiculous: I get to be the third wheel on my best friend’s date… utterly ridiculous._ Not that Chloe had anything against Max: he cared about Sabrina, and she was happy with him – though Chloe did see less of Sabrina now… But Chloe hadn’t exactly had any other plans for the day – most of her friends had summer jobs, leaving her with no one but Bee to hang out with half the time – so she had joined them at the Louvre. Sabrina had at least promised that they would get their nails painted after lunch.

So much for that plan.

Now instead of going to the salon to _paint_ her nails, she was running around Paris with Alix and some random miraculous holder and getting ready to _break_ her nails on Alix’s stupid possessed brother to keep him from killing anyone – or whatever it was that people possessed by ancient sorcerers wanted to do.

Sent-Bee shrugged as through narrowed eyes she examined the figure in black standing in front of her on the grassy lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower. Maybe this day wouldn’t be a total waste after all. Perhaps she could save Pollen and reclaim the Bee Miraculous today. “That miraculous is _mine_!” she shouted, eyes lighting up with anticipation. Without taking her eyes off the Bee, she dropped Bee-atrice to the ground and raced across the distance between them. Bee-atrice yipped agitatedly and hopped up and down as she landed and ran along beside Sent-Bee as fast as her tiny legs could take her. Sent-Bee drew her Venom-gun in one hand and one of her yo-yos in the other as the distance shrank to nothing.

“You’ll get this hair comb back when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands!” the Bee retorted, spinning her top in front of herself as a shield.

“Don’t make promises you’re not prepared to keep!” yelled Sent-Bee. She jumped over the top which the Bee threw at her feet and shot a glob of synthetic Venom at the Bee’s face. The Bee sidestepped away from the Venom and recalled her top to her hand. Sent-Bee dove to the side and rolled to avoid the top that the Bee hurled at her chest. She sprang to her feet and jumped out of the way, narrowly missing the top wrapping around her ankle. Sent-Bee threw her yo-yo and deflected the top away in Bee-atrice’s direction before aiming another shot of Venom at the Bee. The Bee swung her top in a shield, blocking the Venom before it could touch her.

“Is that all you’ve got, _sweetie_?” the Bee mocked, arching an eyebrow at her maliciously. “With your miraculous you were the Queen Bee of Paris, and now you’re just a has-been wannabe playing at hero?” She jumped over Sent-Bee’s head, flipped, and dropped to the ground behind her. “There’s a _new_ Queen of Paris, and she’s a Killer Bee!”

Sent-Bee timed her move for the moment Killer Bee landed. She dropped to the ground as Killer Bee’s punch sailed over her head and spun her leg out behind her, tripping Killer Bee and sending her sprawling. Sent-Bee leapt on top of her in an instant. “So you’re going to use Pollen to _kill_ people?” she growled, pinning Killer Bee’s arms to the ground with her hands. She stared hard into the other girl’s eyes. “This miraculous is _not_ for killing. Bee!”

Bee-atrice bounded over, tongue hanging out and panting in excitement. The puppy crouched over Killer Bee’s black-and-yellow hair and grabbed the hair comb between her teeth. As she tugged the comb out, Killer Bee’s hair started to show brown roots and her sallow complexion tanned.

“No!” Killer Bee pulled her arms together, throwing Sent-Bee off-balance, and kicked her with both feet, sending Sent-Bee sprawling off her chest, before she jammed the hair comb back into her hair, her roots shifting back to black and yellow. She kipped to her feet and aimed a kick at Bee-atrice, who jumped just before it struck and was thrown through the air to land on her side. The puppy let out a weak whine and kicked her legs feebly.

“Bee!” shouted Sent-Bee, her heart jumping up into her throat. She turned on Killer Bee, fire in her eyes behind her visor. “You’re going to regret hurting my dog!”

Sent-Bee jammed her Venom gun back into its holster and charged. Killer Bee might have all the strength and agility that comes with wielding a miraculous, but she certainly didn’t have any of the experience. She didn’t know the first thing about fighting. Sent-Bee gave a feral grin. That was information she could use.

Killer Bee took a hesitant step back, her top held limply in one hand and confusion on her face, as Sent-Bee leapt at her, aiming a kick at Killer Bee’s chest. Killer Bee raised her arm to block the kick, and Sent-Bee landed in front of her, ducked beneath her arms, and punched her twice in the gut in quick succession. Killer Bee dropped back a step and held her arms up defensively as Sent-Bee rained blows on her. With her miraculous-enhanced reflexes, Killer Bee avoided most of Sent-Bee’s punches, but not all. Killer Bee slid to one side and punched Sent-Bee in the ribs, but Sent-Bee spun out of the way and kicked her across the back before bringing her elbow down on the back of Killer Bee’s neck. The other girl let out an involuntary gasp.

“Do you think the Bee Miraculous is some _toy_ that you can play with?” demanded Sent-Bee, jumping over Killer Bee’s wild leg sweep.

“Of course a miraculous isn’t a _toy_ ,” Killer Bee retorted, launching her top at Sent-Bee’s head. Sent-Bee threw her yo-yo to counter, knocking the top off-course. “But a miraculous also isn’t a _game_! You had the Miraculous of Subjection for two years! You should have been _ruling_ this city!” She scoffed. “What have you been doing instead? Playing hero with Ladybug and the super-friends! We _both_ know you were never a hero, Chloe Bourgeois!”

“Maybe I wasn’t a hero when I first received my miraculous,” Sent-Bee admitted, flicking her wrist and throwing her yo-yo out in an arc to wrap around Killer Bee’s torso. She pulled it tight, pinning the villain’s arms to her chest, and stalked closer, stepping on the yo-yo string for added leverage. Killer Bee’s knees bent as she kept herself upright. Sent-Bee glared down into her eyes. “But _I_ have something _you_ don’t: trust. Tell me, _Killer Bee_ , do Night Bat and the Lynchpin actually _trust_ you? Do _you_ trust them?” She laughed derisively and grabbed her collar with one hand, pulling her in so their faces were centimeters apart. “I think we both know the answer to that question. But I _know_ Ladybug trusts me. And I absolutely trust her.”

Killer Bee sneered at her. “Trust is so overrated. But there’s something _I_ ’ve got that _you_ don’t: Venom!”

Sent-Bee’s eyes went wide as the top in Killer Bee’s hand throbbed with the Venom and she stabbed upward at Sent-Bee’s chest. She was too close, her hand tangled up with the yo-yo, to prevent herself from being struck.

With a howl, Bee-atrice leapt between them and was stabbed in the flank by the Venom-impregnated top. Both Sent-Bee and Killer Bee stared in shock as the puppy fell to the ground immobile. “Bee!” Sent-Bee shouted. _It’s just Venom_ , she thought desperately. _She’s got to be okay, right?_

Taking advantage of her distraction, Killer Bee dropped to the ground, swept Sent-Bee’s legs out from under her, and threw the yo-yo string off. “Your rat might have saved you this time,” she shouted, “but she won’t save you every time!”

Sent-Bee glared at her, rolled to her feet, and clenched her fists, her yo-yo discarded on the ground in front of her. “That’s twice you’ve attacked my dog, Bee-tch!” she growled. “You should see what I did to the _last_ guy who messed with Bee!”

A cry rang out from behind Sent-Bee. Involuntarily, she spun around to see that Sk8r Girl was on the ground, her helmet lost in the scrum and her bright pink hair clearly visible. The possessed Jalil stood over her, a sword made of light stabbed into the ground next to her chest. Jalil was shuddering in place and seemed unable to move from that position. Several meters away, Jueran Eazim was on all fours, panting for breath.

“Looks like your friends failed,” Killer Bee observed, arching an eyebrow. She shrugged. “I guess it’s time to drag him home and see what my _partner_ can make of him!”

Sent-Bee’s jaw dropped in horror. “You _want_ to see what would happen if Night Bat used his Kiss on that!?!”

Killer Bee shrugged. “Sometimes you need to sow a little chaos and corruption for a higher purpose.” She threw her top at the still-immobile Jalil.

Sent-Bee jumped between Killer Bee and Jalil and held up her left arm. The top wrapped around her forearm. She saw a moment of surprise on Killer Bee’s face, even as she noticed that her back foot wasn’t planted. Sent-Bee grabbed the top string with her left hand and jerked her arm back, pulling Killer Bee off balance. “There is no way in _hell_ I’m letting you do that!” Sent-Bee growled, lifting her other fist and punching Killer Bee in the face.

Killer Bee stumbled backward clutching her nose as the two Bees became aware of the beeping coming from Killer Bee’s miraculous. Killer Bee gave her a final defiant glare before throwing her top, wrapping it around a beam of the Eiffel Tower, leaping into the air, and swinging away over the river.

Sent-Bee carefully scooped up the unmoving Bee-atrice, cradling her gently in her arms and running a hand through her fur soothingly. Bee-atrice blinked up at her, a tiny whimper coming from her throat. “It’s okay, baby,” Sent-Bee whispered. “Thank you.” Marinette had better not be busy right now… She turned around to find Jueran Eazim and Sk8r Girl slowly pushing themselves to their feet, even as Jalil took in a shuddering breath and formed a light-whip in one hand.


	9. Chapter 9

Alix stared wide-eyed up at the golden face above her. Somewhere along the way she had lost her helmet – perhaps that accounted for the ringing in her ears. She could see the helmet rocking on the ground just out of her reach. She really should put it on to protect her identity. But if there was anything of Jalil still left in his body, he would already have recognized her.

She should be dead now. Not-Jalil had been standing directly over her, pointing one of his light-things at her chest. She had seen what his solid light constructs could do – the ones he had thrown at her at the beginning of the fight had embedded themselves a meter into the pavement! He had thrown something at her which had cut a chunk off her helmet! He had had her dead to rights, and suddenly he had cried out in distress and stabbed his light-sword into the pavement next to her. It was as if he had recognized her.

Jalil wasn’t gone yet! Jalil was still inside there… somewhere.

Alix retracted the wheels back into her skates and pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, even as a light-whip formed in Not-Jalil’s hand. Her field hockey stick was on the ground next to her – not a lot of good _that_ had done her under the circumstances. Not-Jalil had simply absorbed the electricity when she tried to shock him, and then turned it into a shield to block her follow-up swing before picking her up and throwing her away with a gust of wind. Her field hockey balls had done nothing to him. She couldn’t rely on her weapons to fight her brother.

Nor, to be honest, did she really _want_ to fight him anymore.

She stepped toward not-Jalil, ignoring the eerie golden mask which moved and shifted like a normal face. “Jalil,” she whispered quietly, standing right in front of him and staring into his eyes. He could blind her again if he wanted to – she could see that he was considering it. “Jalil, I’m sorry. I should have believed you.” She looked down. His favorite tweed jacket was torn and scuffed from the fight, with bits of his t-shirt showing through. The knees of his jeans were stained with grass and had started to develop holes from his falls. Her own shirt had taken a beating in the fight – although the padding would protect her from normal attacks, it had done nothing against not-Jalil’s light constructs or against the lawn debris he had hurled at her with gale-force winds. She could feel blood oozing from a cut in her arm.

Not-Jalil stared at her silently, his arms quivering at his sides.

“I was wrong,” Alix went on. She gestured to his face. “You were right about this, okay! There really _was_ something weird about that obelisk! And you were right about the aliens, too! I _know_ there are aliens out there – I’ve seen the evidence! I just–” She paused to catch her breath. “I was just embarrassed, okay? I was embarrassed and I was afraid you were going to embarrass me in front of my friends. I… I didn’t mean any of those things I said to you – not really. You are not crazy, you are not insane. You are my brother, and you are one of the most brilliant people I know – and knowing who else I know, that’s saying a lot.”

Not-Jalil’s face turned to look down at her. His eyebrows furrowed in some surprise.

“Look,” she told him, “I know that you are fighting against this thing. I know you would never really hurt me. I know that you didn’t want to hurt me today. Now I need you to fight just a little harder against this thing. You are my brother. I love you. You need to fight this and come back to me! I–I don’t want to lose you!” Alix blinked the wetness away from her eyes. Where had these tears come from? Alix Kubdel didn’t cry!

The mask flickered on Jalil’s face. The golden nose and eyes shifted the tiniest bit to reveal Jalil’s own features beneath. Hardly daring to hope, Alix held her breath. The mask returned to its original shape, but Jalil fell to his knees, gasping and panting for breath. Alix dropped to her knees in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders. The mask flickered away for a moment.

“He’s… he’s so powerful…” Jalil whispered hoarsely. “I–” The golden mask reasserted itself and he pushed himself back to his feet. “I am the Avatar of Amun! No puny mortal can fight my power!”

Alix stood up and clenched her fists at her sides. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Jueran Eazim sitting perfectly still, his eyes open but glazed over. The last time he had done that, he had said he was trying to force his way into Jalil’s mind. If he was going to succeed _this_ time…

Alix put her hands on Jalil’s shoulders, pulled him down to her level, and shouted, “Come on, loser, _fight_ him!”

* * *

Jalil gasped weakly, looking around at the hellscape that his mind had become. The golden presence of Amun loomed over the surface of his mind, lightning flashing ominously around his head. Jalil’s consciousness had lost its definition somewhere in the middle of the fight. He could feel something oozing from his psyche where Amun had lashed it. Were it not for his desperate instinct toward self-preservation, Jalil would have collapsed in on himself and accepted his fate. Were it not for Alix, that almost certainly would have happened long ago.

And yet, Amun’s consciousness also seemed to have lost some measure of its definition. Jalil took note of a slight blurring around the edges, like a drawing that someone had run over with an eraser. Some instinct told Jalil that Amun was becoming exhausted from the struggle, also.

The indigo presence of the Great Scarab appeared once more on the mindscape next to Jalil, his eyes set and hard. “ _I am sorry for leaving you before,_ ” he said quietly, putting a hand on Jalil’s shoulder. “ _He is powerful._ ”

“ _You’re telling me,_ ” Jalil retorted. “ _I… I don’t know if I can beat him by myself,_ ” he admitted.

The Great Scarab squeezed his shoulder. “ _Perhaps not alone. But together?_ ”

Jalil nodded and clenched his fists tightly. Having witnessed Amun’s memories, he understood exactly what Amun would do if he got the chance. He would subject the world to himself, cast aside all religions, supplant all known authorities, and destroy all that stood in his way and refused to bow down to him. And he would probably start with Alix – she was right there, and there was no way she would accept Amun’s plans. Jalil had to stop him here and now.

“ _Concentrate on a positive memory,_ ” the Great Scarab instructed him. “ _One that gives you strength. One that makes you feel powerful._ ”

Jalil felt around inside his memory. So much of his mind had become scrambled from Amun’s constant assaults, but he at last fixated on a memory of the first time he visited the Louvre. He had walked past the large glass pyramid, his hand in his father’s hand, and stared in awe at the imposing edifice. “I always think of Egypt and our Amazigh ancestors when I see this pyramid,” his father had said.

Opening his eyes, Jalil saw that once more the Great Scarab and Amun had begun to grapple. Both combatants appeared winded from their repeated battles, moving slowly and reacting slower still. The Great Scarab’s mental form had diminished in size. Amun’s form had become further blurred. A silver hammer appeared in the Great Scarab’s hand, and he struck Amun in the leg, causing his knee to buckle. Amun stumbled backward. Seeing his opening, Jalil jumped forward and punched Amun in the gut. Amun gasped in shock.

“ _You need to build a mental prison to enclose him!_ ” shouted the Great Scarab.

Without taking his eyes off of Amun, Jalil concentrated once more on that same memory of the Louvre. He nearly gasped in shock as a miniature of the Louvre itself appeared in his hands. He spread his hands further, and the miniature grew larger. Clearly, in the mindscape anything he thought could come into being. Seeing what Jalil was doing, the Great Scarab pushed Amun backward toward Jalil. Jalil lifted the miniature and slammed it down over Amun’s head the moment he came within range.

“ _No!_ ” howled Amun, even as the miniature transformed into a cage and Jalil and the Great Scarab sealed it off.

* * *

Alix watched the battle raging across Not-Jalil’s golden face intently. His face shifted rapidly between the mask features and Jalil’s features, too fast for Alix to keep track of the changes. Suddenly one of Jalil’s eyes popped through the golden mask followed by the other and, with a cry, the mask absorbed fully into his face. Jalil collapsed forward into Alix’s arms, blinking repeatedly and gasping for breath.

“I… I can still hear him,” Jalil whispered. “In my mind. He’s still fighting to get out.”

Jueran Eazim stumbled to his feet and made his way over to them on unsteady legs. Placing one hand on Jalil’s shoulder he warned, “‘Amun’ is not gone. He is always going to be in there. The cage in which we imprisoned him may not hold him forever, but with some training I think you may be able to restrain him.”

Jalil nodded weakly.

“Well _that_ was fun to watch,” called Sent-Bee, handing Alix’s helmet back to her. “I swear, the end there… nightmare fuel for a _week_ … Utterly ridiculous!” She shifted the puppy in her arms, and Alix gave her a look of concern. “Bee saved me,” she explained, hugging the dog to her chest tightly. “But if Ladybug can’t fix this, I _swear_ I will take that bitch’s top and shove it so far up her ass it pokes her in the tonsils!”

As if on cue, a portal opened right behind Sent-Bee, and Pegasus reached through and stuck a needle in Bee-atrice’s leg. He withdrew it quickly, and a wave of red magic swept out through the portal, swirling over everything. The puppy nearly jumped out of Sent-Bee’s arms in her excitement as the magic covered her.

“Chloe!” Bee-atrice shouted, licking her face furiously. “You’re okay! Did you see me? I’m a hero!”

Alix grinned at the puppy’s enthusiasm. “Yeah, I admit it, squirt: you’re a hero.” She let out a sigh of relief as the damage to her suit was repaired and the cut on her arm healed. The ringing in her ears was gone, so she replaced her repaired helmet on her head. Looking through the portal and past Pegasus, she could see Ladybug and Cat Noir standing side by side. And from the look on her face, Alix could tell exactly what Ladybug was thinking: “How the hell did you almost destroy the world?”

Sent-Bee choked back a sob and hugged Bee-atrice tighter, burying her face in the puppy’s fur as Bee-atrice licked her nose excitednly. Then Sent-Bee looked at Jueran Eazim and Jalil, nodded toward the Portal, and announced, “Well, as much fun as this was, you both have a _lot_ of explaining to do…”


	10. Chapter 10

Jalil stared at his surroundings in awe as he stepped through the portal into the Headquarters of the Heroes of Paris and found himself face-to-face with Ladybug, Cat Noir, Pegasus, and Impératrice Pourpre. He moved to one side to allow Sent-Bee, Alix, and the Great Scarab to follow him through the portal as he took in the large underground cavern. Grass and wildflowers grew under his feet. Butterflies fluttered around him, chased by the small Papillon puppy that Sent-Bee had carefully placed on the ground. Looking up, he could make out an arched natural stone ceiling at least ten meters above his head. At the far end of the space, large, imposing doors were shut so he could not see the room behind them. Closer, there was a small grotto which housed something in a golden container that was barely visible from where he stood. A section of the space along one side had been blocked off with walls next to–

“Is that a spaceship?” he asked, staring wide-eyed at the oblong brownish object resting against the cave wall.

“There you go, bro,” Alix told him, waving vaguely in that direction, “proof that aliens exist. Happy?”

“What does this mean for the pyramids?” he asked, his mind racing with possibilities. “What about the Nazca Lines? Are there–”

“Unfortunately,” Pegasus interrupted him, holding a hand up to stop his stream of questions, “you now see all the evidence we have one way or the other regarding the existence of extraterrestrial life-forms and their possible interactions with humanity. We discovered this ship at a crash site outside Paris less than a year ago, and we recovered two bodies from it. The ship had been in that location for some time, but less than a year. We know no more or less than that.”

“ _Aliens,_ ” Amun’s voice whispered sardonically in Jalil’s head. “ _You really have a one-track mind, don’t you?_ ”

Jalil allowed himself a mental smirk as he pushed Amun’s consciousness back through the space between the bars of the prison through which he had slipped a tendril and slammed another pane of glass over the spot. “ _Considering that this proves_ something _I thought to be correct, I’ll take it._ ” Aloud he asked, “So I take it there is absolutely no alien influence behind the obelisk?”

Pegasus shook his head and returned Jalil’s phone to him. “The obelisk was created by a previous Ladybug’s Lucky Charm, not by extraterrestrial beings,” he replied. He switched to English and continued. “As far at the full story behind the obelisk and what transpired this afternoon, perhaps these hieroglyphics can explain it, if you or Jueran Eazim can translate them.”

Jalil looked down at the pictures on his phone, vaguely aware of Jueran Eazim reading over his shoulder. With the benefit of Amun’s knowledge available for him to tap into, Jalil found himself able to read the hieroglyphics much more easily than he had read them when he first laid eyes on the obelisk, just that morning. Had it only been that morning when he found the obelisk? It felt as though several lifetimes had passed while he was a prisoner in his own mind.

Ladybug stared at them and tapped her feet with some annoyance. “Well?”

Jueran Eazim looked up from the phone and sighed. “I apologize that my team’s mistake has cost you so much,” he finally answered. “The story I share now was passed down in the history of my Miraculous Temple – some of it was inscribed here on the obelisk, though my knowledge of hieroglyphics is poor. Since you are the Ladybug today and this has affected your teammate’s brother, I suppose it is only right for you to know it.

“The obelisk contained the remains of a Berber mage. Shortly after the destruction of Atlantis, he came into possession of several scrolls which had survived the collapse and become lost in North Africa. By means of those scrolls he was able to unlock godlike magical powers, akin to those of the greatest Atlantean mages. During the glory days of Atlantis, he would have been sent to train in their magic schools where they could have kept an eye on him and controlled his growing influence, but at that time there was no Atlantis to counter his threat or turn it to a positive use. The African Miraculous Guardians of the time dispatched the holders of all the miraculous in their possession to battle the mage. They fought him and, with unforeseen assistance from the Ladybug of the day, they were able to stop him. He was contained within that obelisk, which was moved back and forth between the African Miraculous temples for millennia for safekeeping, always trying to keep it out of the hands of those who might unleash the mage’s power on the world. About 200 years ago, the obelisk was lost in a sandstorm while en route to my temple, the Egyptian one.

“Last month one of my teammates was undercover observing a French archaeological dig. He saw and recognized the obelisk when it was unearthed, and sent word back to the temple immediately, asking what to do. For _many_ reasons, we were unable to move fast enough to reclaim the obelisk before it was loaded onto a ship and sent to your Louvre. I elected to come after it. I heard this man talking at the museum, realized he must be referring to the obelisk, and followed. Unfortunately, I was unable to prevent him from breaking it.”

“I probably would not have broken the obelisk if you had not startled me,” Jalil retorted. “I assure you, I am not an idiot!”

“ _Really? Is that what you think?_ ” scoffed Amun. “ _You could’ve fooled me._ ”

“ _Shut up,_ ” grumbled Jalil.

“I apologize for that,” Jueran Eazim told him, grimacing. “It certainly was not my intention.”

Ladybug looked at the two of them, a frown on her face. “So is there a way to reverse this?” she asked. “Is Jalil stuck with this… _thing_ … permanently?”

“Unfortunately,” began Jueran Eazim, “according to the obelisk – if I am reading this correctly – it appears that the mask has now bonded to Jalil’s soul. That process is irreversible. Jalil will now have access to all of the mage’s power and knowledge, but the mage’s mind is still present within him, and could consume him and overwhelm him if Jalil ever loses control. The alternative is to imprison the mage once more – if you are up to that, Ladybug – but that would be fatal for Jalil.”

“What are we going to do with him now, then?” asked Alix, giving Jalil a worried look.

Jalil shrugged. “I have no desire to lose control and be consumed by Amun. I do not want to hurt anyone. If that is the only way…”

Amun laughed. “ _Of course you want to lose control,_ ” he observed. “ _After all, you now have unassailable proof of your theories! Don’t you want the scholarly community to learn all of this?_ ”

“ _Not if the price is that you use my body to hurt innocent people!_ ” Jalil retorted heatedly. “ _Not at the cost of my soul!_ ”

“ _Souls are overrated._ ”

Jueran Eazim gave Jalil an inscrutable look before saying, “Perhaps he can live with this. It was my people who lost the obelisk in the first place, so I feel I must help you resolve this problem. With your permission, Ladybug, I will remain in Paris and use my ability to train Jalil so he can resist Amun’s influence and maintain his control over his mind.”

Ladybug looked at Cat Noir and raised an eyebrow. After a moment, Cat Noir laughed and said, “I suppose it is a good _wing_ we have so many rooms here!”

Ladybug rolled her eyes and told Jueran Eazim, “You are welcome to stay as long as necessary.”

“Thank you,” he replied, nodding in appreciation. “First, I must send a message back to the Sphinx to let them know what has happened.”

Alix’s jaw dropped and her eyes bugged out. “Wait… your Miraculous temple… is underneath the Great Sphinx!?!” she asked weakly.

Jueran Eazim shrugged. “We prefer for outsiders not to know about it since – as far as we know – we have one of the largest collections of Atlantean knowledge remaining in existence following the island’s destruction, but yes.”

Alix made a strangled sound of shock.

Jalil turned to her in triumph and shouted, “See? I _knew_ there were secret passages under the Sphinx!”


End file.
